Our new Garmin GPS fits in the palm of your hand and is named Amber. She tells you where to go and exactly how to get there. She has a clear and enticing voice, except when you go the wrong way and she tells you she is "recalculating."

And earlier this week on my vacation, she missed the parking lot for the hiking trail by several miles. And I was pissed. A waste of gas, a waste of time. Plus now there existed the possibility of coming off the mountain in the dark.

As we drove slowly back to the trail head, I happened to notice an incredible waterfall you could swim in with a natural water slide. That could only be seen by driving on that side of the road. That could only have been seen by being sent too far and having to return.

After climbing a 3500 foot mountain in 90 degree heat, swimming in that waterfall later in the day was heaven. Thank you, Amber. I don't even get annoyed anymore when you scold me about "recalculating."

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This weekend, Amber, our new GPS, again led us astray. She seductively led us to the wrong parking lot for the start of the biking trail. And I was mad. But we parked anyway and started out.

As we biked along we finally reached the original parking lot for the trail, with an enormous county fair going on there with parking blocked off for miles around. Thank you, Amber. Another smart move.

Unlike Sun's press release today which announced Sun and Fujitsu's new quad-core SPARC64-based servers. The only commercial benchmark in this press release was an SAP performance claim which needed to use the largest configuration ever on this benchmark. Which translates into the IBM Power 595 having 262% better performance per core.(1)

Trying to go elsewhere, Sun also points to a LINPACK result in the HPC parking lot. And I certainly wouldn't drive there considering Sun and Fujitsu's number of entries in the TOP500.

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SAP, mySAP and other SAP product and service names mentioned herein as well as their respectivelogos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries allover the world.

This morning I read that gas stations are running out of the number 4. Who could have imagined ? You see, now that gas is $4.40/gallon, they don't have enough to go around. So they are painting their own and ordering them as fast as they can.

Numbers are important here. And so is the number of cores needed to run a benchmark. It's imperative to look at the technology for processors, chips, cores and threads when making any comparisons. And in many cases, software is even priced per core. So it really does pay to examine closely the exact configuration used in a benchmark and look at all the costs involved to get the performance.

And it's not surprising that gas stations are ordering more 5's, just in case.

************************************************The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.

You'd have to be a hermit not to realize that things are getting tougher economically for many of us. Energy prices and mortgages are skyrocketing. Trips to the mall are a luxury. Staycations have replaced vacations.

And that's why it was a pleasant surprise to see something recently that actually went down in price. An IBM TPC-C result from October was revised last week ---- the change being that price decreased from $2.56/tpmC to $2.43/tpmC.(1) Mostly because of savings on IBM storage.

Better price performance, more value for the dollar. Great news. But make sure to note that the decrease was certainly not attributable to the recent increase in Oracle pricing, which did make it tough for some benchmark repricing.

Last week Al Gore set a lofty performance goal for us. A challenge to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and clean sources within 10 years.

Some lauded him for urging change and setting a goal. Others simply said it couldn't be done.

But what's important is understanding the sense of urgency and starting on the path to reach that goal. Maybe "wecansolveit" in 10 years, probably not. But we can sure try.

Every little bit counts and that's why the Green500 list is so valuable, a ranking of the most energy-efficient supercomputers in the world. IBM holds all top ten places. Of the top 40, 39 are from IBM.

And what is ironic is that I can envision that these very systems on the list may help researchers in astronomy and climate prediction to find even more clean sources of energy. Like from the wind, and the sun.

In his speech, Gore talked about survival of a country being at risk. “And even more — if more should be required — the future of human civilization is at stake.”

We should sure try.

************************************************Source: www.green500.org. Results current as of 7/24/08.

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And I am happy to report that all these wonderful things have been accomplished this summer. And more. Including Linux being available now on the IBM Power 595 with some outstanding benchmarks, of course.

The IBM Power 595 today achieved the best 64-core SPECint_rate2006, the best 64-core Linux SPECfp_rate2006, the best 64-core SPECompM2001, and the best 64-core LINPACK result. (1)

Another thing in life worth waiting for. But I am still waiting on the tomatoes.